The contours of Roman Jakobson’s Randbemerkungenzur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak. From Russian to Italian: a fifty-year journey (1935-1985)

Abstract

This paper concerns Roman Jakobson’s article Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak (Marginal Notes on the Prose of the Poet Pasternak). It appeared in 1935 in the Prague-German languagejoumal “Slavische Rundschau” (Slavic Review). In the same year, Jakobson published a shorter version as an afterword to Glejt, the Czech edition of Boris Pasternak’s Ochrannaja gramota (The Safe Conduct). As discovered in “Slavische Rundschau’”s archive (LA PNP - The Museum of Czech Literature Literary Archive), this writing has an inedited Russian typescripted version, signed by Jakobson. The transcript of this version is introduced by an essay which outlines the editorial history of Jakobson’s writing and contextualises the reception of Pasternak’s production in interwar Czechoslovakia.